


New Hire

by HWest



Category: Bleach
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-21 02:19:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14906513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HWest/pseuds/HWest
Summary: He’d been going for a weapons upgrade, just as most Shinigami who achieved bankai hoped and expected.





	New Hire

Kisuke had fought Benihime up and down the secret training area under Sōkyoku Hill for two and a half days, and he was getting _tired_.

They broke apart, both gasping, their garments splashed with the red of blood, the walls of the training area stained with still-glowing scarlet from the backwash of Kisuke’s kido attacks.

“Why will you not yield?” he demanded of her, sweat flying off his stubbled chin as he leapt and ducked and parried, crying out in utter frustration. “I’ve demonstrated my mastery of the blade in every form we know, including every kido combination. A _dozen times over_.”

Tessai, one of his two trusted spotters for Kisuke’s never-before-tried method of using the Tenshintai to force bankai, had been compelled to strengthen the barriers around the training area three times to keep them still concealed. Yoruichi had twice made moves to call this punishing show to a halt, barely averted. She had not quite grasped (because Kiskue hadn’t quite pointed it out) that there would be no halt to this experiment short of his own success, or crippling. Or his and Benihime’s deaths both. Would his sword go _that far_ to resist him? “Benihime, _why_?”

She answered in a voice of bleak despair the depth of which matched his own frustration—and hoarse with honesty, _finally_ , after nearly three days of evasion. “Because if you succeed in this, Kisuke, you will never again love me best.”

He retreated two steps, three, but not, this time, to gain space for another attack. Not yet. She lowered and leaned on the sword that was the perfect representation of her keen and brilliant self, or perhaps it was the other way around, and watched him warily.

Inspiration often came this way, blooming directly in his brain without apparent precursor. There was always, of course, preparation, study and false trials and sleepless nights, but somehow they all washed out of his memory in the breathtaking moment of blinding light. The grinding time came after, spent in testing the new truth over and over, trying in every way he could devise to break it before he dared trust it.

Today, he was out of time. He went straight for it.

It was not a sword’s size that betrayed its power, but its spiritual density, or Gotei 13 captains in bankai would be swinging weapons as large as buildings. (Well… yeah, some did. Kisuke secretly considered that grossly inelegant, but even he had the sense not to say so to such captains’ faces.) Strength just as often grew in the opposite direction to size. Benihime herself had done so, concentrating from her first awakening in shikai to the slim and deadly blade he adored and had adorned with that red silk tassel in honor of her dark beauty. Her odd angular point thrust well enough, but she was a blade built to cut open, to reveal. Scalpel-sharp to _dissect_ his enemies and lay them bare to his eye and mind.

He lifted the sword in his hand, mirror-twin to the one on which his red princess leaned watching him in something like grief. And as it rose, it _changed_.

He hadn’t known exactly what he would get when he invited this, but even he was shocked. Not a sword at all, but the simplest possible wooden cane, with a long straight shaft to support his height and a half-circle curl at the top for a handle to exactly match his grip. _Ah. Not cane. Sword-cane, of course._ The blond wood concealed the power at its heart much as his unruly hair concealed the brains in his head.

The spiritual density of the thin blade in the core was like the center of a star. The death’s-head seal on the ferrule glowed with so much leaking power, it left smoking gold wisps as if on fire.

Holy _crap_ , if he ever took this thing out in public he was going to have to come up with a better insulation and concealment for its potential. His mind tried at once to gallop down six possible methods for doing just that, but he reined it back hard. _Yes. But not_ now.

He hung the cane over his left wrist, raised and closed his right hand, and spoke: “Bakudō Sixty-three. Sabō Sabaku!”

Thick, glowing white ropes wrapped themselves around Benihime, trapping her sword arm at her side. She wrenched once, then stilled and swallowed, raising her head to regard him steadily, like a woman braving her execution.

He tossed the cane back into his right hand, lifted it level, and implemented a perfect stop-thrust.

The ferrule went through her white forehead as easily as dropping a pearl through wine. It seemed as simple as tapping a soul out of its body in the living world, and much like it. Kisuke’s heart clenched in anticipation, as if he were about to unwrap the best Christmas present _ever_. A better, stronger, faster, hotter Benihime would soon be his.

“ _Ban. Kai._ ” But the following name that spilled unbidden from his lips was not any of the thousands of combinations he’d tried out in his head in his anxious years of secretly training up for this.

“ _ **Kannonbiraki Benihime Aratame!**_ ”

And neither was the result.

He stepped back, and back again, as the slender personification of his blade imploded, then reversed, growing up and out.

And up. And out.

The vast woman who stared down at him with grave and penetrating eyes was like nothing he’d ever imagined, and his imagination on this point had been _fervid_ ; not a weapon, not a warrior. Her jointed arms reminded him of a spider’s, swift to spin thread and weave and bind. _Jorōgumo_ , he thought wildly. Except her web, he imagined, could catch _worlds_. A strange blue glow pulsed like a jewel at her heart, and oh my he wanted to know more about _that_. Also, he was long reconciled to his inner self manifesting as feminine, if in a deadly mold, but why did she look more than a little like Retsu Unohana?

The long-time captain of the Fourth was possibly the most powerful officer in the Gotei 13 apart from Captain-General Yamamoto’s volcanic destruction. And that formidable old Shinigami just had boundless power. Master healer Unohana possessed power plus finesse. With that much fine control, one needed much less power to do much, much more damage.

Or… repair. Anti-entropic, uphill against the whole weight of the universe and time.

Or _making_.

Because destruction was easy. Creation was _hard_.

Kisuke’s new bankai had a finite range, he realized with relief. Because between them, the two sides of Benihime were a goddess of destruction and creation, and that pretty much covered the whole ground, didn’t it? If her range had been as vast as her depth, he might be tempted to bind _himself_ in the bowels of Muken in sheer dread of his own potential.

Kisuke didn’t actually want to be a god—Soul King avert, think of the _administration_. Or even a Gotei 13 captain, for that matter. But who would believe him?

So yes, the first item on his agenda had better be finding sure ways to conceal that potential from others, so as not to tempt the Central 46—who did not care for any power they did not understand and control and so were not going to like this one bit—to skip Muken and go straight for Kisuke’s execution on Sōkyoku Hill above.

“Urahara-dono!” Tessai’s deep voice broke upward into something almost a wail, quavering as if he were about to wet himself. The unexpected tone, from that big, calm, kido master, was so startling Kisuke nearly dropped his cane. “ _What have you done?_ ”

Yoruichi, on her high perch out of the line of recent fire, was on her hands and knees, staring down with her mouth agape. “What _is_ that? Kisuke, did that come out of _you_?”

_All mine_ , Kisuke thought in a whirl of exultation and terror. _All me_. And shouldn’t he have known?

He’d been going for a weapons upgrade, just as most Shinigami who achieved bankai hoped and expected. For once, he had thought too small.

Well. He wouldn’t make _that_ mistake again.

A huge grin split his weary face. He was fairly sure all his heart shone in his eyes, because the liquid running down his face felt warm as blood. He dabbed at it and was relieved to find only tears. So, _weeping for joy_ wasn’t just an overblown poetical turn of phrase. Yeah, plus maybe a touch of the hysteria of exhaustion, but for once, he felt he’d earned it.

He would have to apologize profoundly, later, to shikai-Benihime. She had been right. Though he would try to make it up to her as best as he could. Because he needed her just as much as he needed the goddess before him in order to be complete: as up needed down, as yin needed yang. As the needle and thread needed the blades of the scissors.

And as both needed the designer.

He used his new cane to straighten up, not sure when he’d bent under the weight of all these revelations, his back making muffled popping noises. _Ouch_. His hungry stare upward never wavered.

“ _That,_ ” he replied to both his invaluable helpers still watching agog—and without whom he’d probably have been dead a day ago, victim of his own vaulting hubris, “is my _new lab partner_.”

And he couldn’t _wait_ to get started.

**Author's Note:**

> Ever since what I now think of as Canonbiraki Benihime was revealed, I've been waiting for someone to write this scene. Grew moss, got frustrated. If anyone else wants to grab this bunny and run, go for it.
> 
> This brief work owes a lot of inspiration to Saranel's excellent and much longer _Mono no Aware_ , highly recommended.


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